Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
I love little books, and I’ve got a growing collection of them on various different subjects — they’re just so much fun to read, they often feature great art or photos, and they’re easy to stuff into odd nooks and crannies in my bookshelves!
Here are a bunch of pocket-sized reads I finished recently: Fountain Pens by Alex Fortis and Antonio Vannucchi, Bad Cat by Jim Edgar, and Treasures of Disney Animation Art.
It’s a well-known fact that I harbor no love for the Twilight saga. To put it succinctly, among a host of other reasons, I am not a fan of the teen paranormal romance genre in general, I find Stephenie Meyer’s writing abhorrent, I prefer vampires who don’t sparkle (and pasty-faced Rob Pattinson doesn’t do anything for me, either, not that I would spend good money on any of the movies), and I consider Bella Swan one of the worst characters I’ve ever read in print (Twi-hards, please don’t spam me with hate messages!).
That said, I didn’t have high hopes for the Twilight graphic novel, which my boss lent me to review. I was curious for two reasons: local bookstores are having price wars to drive the sales of the books (there are even billboards for the book!); and I wanted to see how it was adapted visually, given its base material.
I also had a chance to review Maggie Stiefwater’s Shiver, which, despite my apprehensions, turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
We’ve all bought recyclable bags, turned off our lights for global energy-saving ceremonies, replaced our appliances with newer energy-saving models, and favored organic produce and cosmetics over conventional mass-produced items. There’s a whole load of buzzwords to go with the “green movement”: energy efficiency, sustainable development, carbon footprint, climate change, and all that jazz, but very few people actually understand what ecology is.
Get a Grip on Ecology by David Burnie is a handy compendium of green knowledge that explores ecology — the fascinating study of the network of relationships between living things and the environment, printed on recycled paper in green and black ink. I actually spotted it at a bargain bookstore, thought it looked interesting, then cheapo me thought it was too expensive and wishlisted it on BookMooch instead. A copy soon came up and was sent to me a few weeks later.
I’ve been meaning to join the Chunkster Reading Challenge ever since my book blogger friend Jo blogged about it, and because I’ve just started a real chunkster of a book (Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, in case you’re wondering), I’ve decided to formally join the challenge.
I’m an escapist reader by nature so I like thick, meaty reads, which is perfect for joining the Chunkster Reading Challenge, a challenge for “readers who like their books fat and chunky.” The challenge defines a chunkster as “450 pages or more of ADULT literature (fiction or nonfiction).”
A couple of months ago, I blogged about how much I enjoyed the first two books of The Mysterious Benedict Society, and I recently got to read the third book in the series, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
If you’re not familiar with the “prisoner’s dilemma,” it’s a problem involving two prisoners who are physically separated and offered a deal by their captor to betray their fellow prisoner and get off scot-free. The book opens with Sticky and Kate in one room and Constance and Reynie in another, in a “prisoner’s dilemma” type of test supervised by Rhonda Kazembe, one of Mr. Benedict’s assistants. They had three options:
(A) If both teams remain silent, all of them receive extra kitchen duty for one day.
(B) If both teams betray each other, all of them would receive extra kitchen duty for one week.
(C) If one team chose silence and one team chose betrayal, the traitors would get of free while the other team would be kitchen slaves for a whole week!
Continue reading “The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma”